Southern psychedelic rockers, simply check out that awesome power on ‘Crazy Man’, the outlaw blues on ‘Situation’ or the creepy Echoplex freak-out that starts ‘Dead Man’ to sample a band at its peak. The break had given Josefus additional time to mature, “When we returned to Phoenix in March to record again, we had been playing those songs live for three extra months and knew exactly what we were going to record. It was wham, bam and outta there,” enthuses Dave.
The band knew they were onto something special. “It was a top seller in Houston right there with The Beatles’ Abbey Road,” recalls Ray. “With national exposure on a major label we could’ve been a household name.” Dave is amazed that the reputation has held up: “We thought we had some good music, but we certainly never thought of Dead Man having fans 40 years later. We were too young to be thinking of anything 40 years ahead.”
Hopes for the album were high and it caught on almost instantaneously in Houston and the surrounding areas, becoming a #1 seller in Texas. Dave recalls a lot of fun as the band got on the road to promote the release. “Even the rough times seem like they were fun now that we look back on them. When we played our first major concert in Austin, we slept at some crash pad with mattresses all around the floor. Dingy motels were an improvement after that. But things eventually got better. On the road we had to deal with a lot of people who didn’t think much of our long hair, but the fans at our shows were great!” It was not long after that their deal with MainstreamRecords came about. “We kept playing all around Texas, selling our album, and improving our stage show. It was a sudden announcement when we
heard we had a deal with Mainstream.” Ray recalls hopes were sky high, “That was the original label of Janis Joplin and The Amboy Dukes, so we thought everything was going to be great.”
However, what happened next perhaps ripped the heart out of the band, as Dave explains. “We were blowing people away with our live concerts, which were mainly music from the Dead Man album. We were initially thrilled to get the deal with Mainstreambut we thought we were going to record a better version of Dead Man. When they said they wanted all new material, we had to scramble to throw
The band recorded the album themselves and put it out on their own Hookah label, thus creating one of the most desirable private press albums of the era.
together an album’s worth of songs from various ideas that we hadn’t really spent much time on at all.” The self-titled second album has a few stand-out tracks, such as ‘I Saw A Killing’ and the stunning guitar work of ‘I’m Getting On’, as well as a re- recording of an early track, ‘Feeling Good’, but there were several weaker moments on the LP upon which the band appears to be completely neutered. Dave ruminates over what went wrong. “Doug had become so busy with our manager trying to run things that he was a lot less interested in playing the drums. We were playing shows all the time and didn’t need to rehearse for that, but we weren’t developing new material. That’s what hurt us with the Mainstreamsessions. It was depressing to
have our second album be so weak in comparison to Dead Man.”
It was not long after that they split up. Pete and Ray formed a band called Stone Axe that recorded one 45. This would be the end of the story were it not for the band getting back together some 10 years later. Dave explains, “I was organizing a musicians’ co- op to produce our own records and concerts. At one of these co-op produced shows, Pete and Ray showed up and we got on stage for an impromptu set of a few songs. That led to a serious effort to put the band back together again. We had Jerry (from Stone Axe) on drums. We resurrected the Hookah label and put out two 45s (in ’79).” The band have regrouped in ’89 for the Son Of Dead Man album as well as reunion shows since then and their legend shows little sign of abating. “It’s always been flattering that so many people enjoy our music. I was surprised when the first bootlegs of Josefus appeared in the ’80s, but that served to keep the band in front of more people through the years,” muses Dave. “The continued reissues of Dead Man show how well that music stands the test of time.” Leesa is similarly impressed, “When I heard the Dead Man LP for the first time it reminded me of the music I’d grown up listening to. I’ve always been a huge Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Cream fan. Josefus fit right in with them. The heaviness of themusic, mixed with the blues, really sucked me in. I wanted to keep the heavy acid-rock style alive.”
Ray sums up why he’s loved every minute of his time with Josefus. “Just the love of music which came naturally for me. And all the women were pretty nice, too.”
Left-to-right: Dave Mitchell, Pete Bailey, Doug Tull, Ray Turner
Visit
www.josefusmusic.comfor more about the band’s history and recent projects.
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